Mastercard takes stake in Northbrook's Mu Sigma

Mastercard Advisors has taken a stake in Northbrook-based data analytics firm Mu Sigma for an undisclosed amount, the companies announced Thursday.

Together, the firms will develop business analytics products to help companies acquire customers and boost customer loyalty, they said in a statement.

Purchase, N.Y.-based MasterCard Advisors is a division of MasterCard. The company bills itself as a leader in so-called big data analytics, providing large-scale analysis of transactions to industries including retail, banking, manufacturing and government.

Mu Sigma, undertakes large-scale and complex data analytics on behalf of clients such as Microsoft Corp. and Dell Inc. Put simply, analytics helps a business understand "why something happens, what will happen, so what and now what?" founder Dhiraj Rajaram, founder and chief executive told the Tribune.

The company employs more than 2,500 people, mostly in Bangalore, India, who provide analytics to industries including pharmaceutics, health, financial services, retail and insurance.

Analytics underpin marketing, supply chain and risk-management decisions in industries such as insurance, pharmaceuticals, retail and financial services. Mu Sigma has helped retailers such as Ideeli.com track customers browsing and shopping habits online in order to provide them more detailed customer service and targeted marketing.

In another case, the firm used medical patient data to help a pharmaceutical company design a program for distributing free product samples that wouldn't cannibalize revenue from prescriptions.

Mu Sigma's expertise lies in tackling "Big Data," or data sets that are too large and complex for the current generation of database technology.

Data analytics is an active industry in Chicago. In 2009, IBM acquired Chicago-based analytics firm SPSS in a deal valued at $1.2 billion. A year later, DePaul University opened the Center for Data Mining and Predictive Analytics with funding from IBM and began offering a new Masters of Science degree in predictive analytics. Analytics software provider SAS Institute, Inc. has a large office in the Loop.